Developing an Automated System, Based on Remtoly-Sensed Data, for Recognizing the Effect of Climate on the Morphology of Urban Open Spaces

Urban form reflects cultural, socio-economical and environmental parameters and constraints. An important environmental generator of urban form is climate. The majority of existing research that deals with the influence of climate on the development of urban form tends to present vernacular (traditional) urban form as a successful combination of architecture, urban design and climate. This assumption is supported by the claim that vernacular settlements adapted to the harsh climatic conditions through a process of trial and error. Selected cases of vernacular settlements are often presented to support this claim. This paper introduces the first part of an ongoing research which develops a model that investigates this claim through a quantitative based analysis. An automated system is under development, which will assist in studying the effect of prevailing climatic conditions on the development of urban form, particularly the development of vernacular urban form in hot-arid regions. This system combines: a) automated recognition of urban open spaces and b) automated recognition of morphological patterns and their analysis based on local climatic conditions. The system is based on remotely-sensed images with very-high spatial resolution and integrates image processing tools with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) spatial analysis.